Fortenbery, Lynn

ORAL HISTORY OF ROSELLEN “LYNN” FORTENBERY
Interviewed by Connie Battle
January 21, 2003
Mrs. Battle: Tell me how you happened to come to Oak Ridge.
Mrs. Fortenbery: All right, this is my favorite story about time travel. I had graduated with a degree in Chemistry in February.
Mrs. Battle: What year?
Mrs. Fortenbery: In 1944. I had done a summer term. That’s why I got out early, and the professors recommended of all the applications that had come in recruiting things that perhaps I’d enjoy going to Tennessee instead of Delaware, and part of it was the lure. They were telling us they were tapping into our pioneering instincts, don’t you know. Well anyway, I left in March. I left Chicago in a snowstorm and I had an upper berth.
Mrs. Battle: You were on a train.
Mrs. Fortenbery: On a train, and I as we crossed the Ohio River, came into Kentucky, it was morning and the forsythia was blooming. That’s what was so strange. Anyway I stayed in Knoxville. I think it was a Saturday night because I stayed either at Andrew Johnson or Farragut Hotel, can’t remember, but I know walking the streets of Knoxville was an absolutely amazing trip for me. It was crowded. It was just so crowded with people. Now think of today, downtown Knoxville.
Mrs. Battle: Yes, right
Mrs. Fortenbery: But anyway, at every corner there was somebody sitting there who had no legs, was asking for donations, and anyway it was just – so I went to a movie, I remember. I can’t tell you what movie I went to, but I believe that it may have been Monday morning when I went back over to the office, which I think was a union office, Tennessee Eastman, where I boarded a bus to go to “the project.” That’s what they called it.
Mrs. Battle: “The project.”
Mrs. Fortenbery: “The project.” And so out to the project I went and all of this was – I mean, here it was. I had never been so – this was brand new city. They were building it when I arrived and I could not understand the language. Now I know people find this hard to believe, because soon we became acclimated, but at first it was very strange. But it was all exciting and brand new. And so that’s how I managed to get here and lived over in West Village, what they called West Village, in a dormitory and it was in the summer. It was hot and dusty and when it rained it was muddy. It definitely took a lot of stamina to stay here, but we soon – we worked shift work.
Mrs. Battle: What plant did you work at?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Y-12
Mrs. Battle: And what did you do?
Mrs. Fortenbery: I was an analytical chemist.
Mrs. Battle: What college did you graduate in?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Lawrence University.
Mrs. Battle: In Chicago.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, in Wisconsin.
Mrs. Battle: Oh in Wisconsin, okay.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And because I came from the upper peninsula of Michigan – and my father had gone to the University of Wisconsin and my uncles had all gone to Houghton Tech, which was an engineering school where I’d thought I’d like to go, but they said I wouldn’t be happy there and I believed them. But anyway, you made all your friends right away. It was just instant bonding.
Mrs. Battle: This is, you're talking about back in Oak Ridge now.
Mrs. Fortenbery: In Oak Ridge, yeah. And it was the people that were on your shift.
Mrs. Battle: Did you rotate shift or did work the same shift?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, no it was rotating shifts, yeah, and midnight shift and day shift and 3:00 to 11:00 shift. And the midnight shift was lovely because you didn’t get bothered by anybody. It was nice and quiet except that every now and then some big mucky muck from Rochester would come and stroll through the lab and ask questions and leave us all trembling. But anyway, we caught on fast to what we were supposed to be doing.
Mrs. Battle: Were there men and women or were they mostly women?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Mixed.
Mrs. Battle: It was mixed?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, and we had, the first lab that I was in had a woman supervisor, and when a person from another lab came over to ask some questions, she was very, very possessive about our little place and she said, “Now, we already figured out how to do this; you go figure it out yourself.” Which I thought was very odd. Soon we heard that every seventh person was a G7, which meant that they were in the Army but came to Oak Ridge and pretended to be civilians, and they had their ear to the ground so that if anybody talked out of turn, they were whisked away. Where to, we did not know. But it made you very leery about talking out of turn until you knew someone very, very well. Then you could discuss what you were doing. But it was amazing to me in the office where, when you opened up the textbook it would fall right open to our fission process that we were working on. So it wasn’t any secret to people with “3” on their badge, and I guess because we had had some nuclear physics before we came – but anyway, that was my first experience.
Mrs. Battle: Right, did you enjoy living in the dorm?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, well, didn’t spend much time there as a matter of fact. You know, you went to the cafeteria to eat and your friends – you would go somewhere else, maybe find a place to eat someplace else, take the bus to Knoxville. The fun thing [was] that anybody with a car was fair game. They were very popular. I found out that besides the language difference, the sun was much different in Tennessee than up in Michigan, and the first time I went to Big Ridge during the day and came home to work a midnight shift, I was so badly sunburned that I had to go to the infirmary. I was miserable. So I learned about the direct rays of the sun in Tennessee, but that was one of the things you did in the summer. So you didn’t spend – at least I didn’t spend very much time in the dorm, although it was fun. The people were, they were just riotous; they were funny. What was amazing to me in Oak Ridge in the early days was the complete equality everybody felt with everybody else. Nobody seemed to feel that they were any better than anybody else, which [is] not true today, and also we were an extremely tolerant bunch of people, you know.
Mrs. Battle: Yes.
Mrs. Fortenbery: There were things that went on that were a little risqué – so what. We didn’t worry about it. But we had extremely strict house mothers in those dorms. You didn’t get away with anything in the dorm if you tried, so that was kind of interesting because I had come from a college where it was rather loosely governed, so it was kind of interesting that we had some strict chaperones. But it was interesting.
Mrs. Battle: Did you meet your husband while you were at work or how did you meet him?
Mrs. Fortenbery: I first met him – my children think this is interesting – before I received my clearance to go to Y-12, I went to what they called the “bullpen,” and that building is still there. I don’t know which one it is now, but it’s a concrete block building that is now right behind the DOE Building, and people that were waiting for clearance were sent there and given any number of different kinds of jobs to do. I was put to assisting the nurses who were giving the new people coming in their shots, and my husband had come up. He had been working in Talladega, Alabama, at the Powder Plant, and then he was sent up here to work. I think there was just a whole crew from Talladega that was sent up. They were all chemists and were sent up to work at Y-12. And lo and behold they gave him his shot and he fainted, so I had to take care of this fainted person, and you know, [the] first experience wasn’t too good. I can’t imagine why somebody would faint when they have a shot. But anyway, I didn’t see much of him, except he turned up on the same shift as I was at Y-12. But in the meantime, I had met several other people, and it was all group stuff. We’d go to the Smokies and we would go to Big Ridge and we would do fun things.
Mrs. Battle: But gas was rationed.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: How did you manage that?
Mrs. Fortenbery: How the person who owned the automobiles managed, I don��t know because that was something that somehow or other they managed to get some gasoline. One of the funniest stories that was told about one person, and I won’t go into too many details, but he had a very fancy convertible car, and I don’t know how many people have told this story, but he went – they, a whole bunch, went to the Smokies. They left their lunch in the car while they went on a hike, and when they came back, this bear had gone through the convertible roof to get the food, and that story just went everywhere. I’m sure that if you talk to anybody who was here in the earlier days, they’ll know that story because the person was fairly well known and loved his car.
Mrs. Battle: Of course.
Mrs. Fortenbery: But how they got the gasoline, I didn’t ask. I do know that anytime there was a line anywhere, people got in line, because it meant that they had something, be it cigarettes or candy or whatever. You got in line because everything was rather scarce. It was the same at the grocery, which I didn’t worry about until I married. My problem [was] we couldn’t cook in the dorm, and we went to the cafeteria to eat or we would hear about some fantastic place and take a bus to Knoxville on a day off. Real food with real napkins – think we were really uptown.
Mrs. Battle: Well when did you get married?
Mrs. Fortenbery: June of 1945. We courted fast in those days, but I did take my prospective husband and I took a train North so that my people could meet him, and my younger brothers just thought this was the funniest freak they had ever run into. They constantly asked him questions to hear him talk because he was from Kentucky originally, but he’d lived in Alabama long enough that he sounded like he came from Alabama. This was such a novelty and they just were falling over each other. They thought this was so funny. But anyway, I guess my mother and dad didn’t know if this was such a good idea, but since I had gone off by myself in the first place they figured, well, it’s my business. So we were married as soon as they gave us a place to live. Then we went ahead and got married. We had to wait till they – there wasn't any point in getting married and not having a place to live, so we got on a list to find the place and we were very fortunate. We had a “K1” apartment. They were four-unit apartments, and they were on West Outer and Wade Lane, and they were excellent. They were actually made out of redwood, beautiful, beautiful apartments, very well made, hardwood floors, very nice. So that’s what we found, and so we married and Morris’s best friend helped me move from the dormitory that afternoon and brought all my stuff to this apartment and then some other friends had a reception for us. They already had a house; it was a flattop. So anyway, that was the story of that.
Mrs. Battle: Were you married in a church?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, we were married in Father Seener’s – he had a house up on Geneva Lane, and we were married in his living room.
Mrs. Battle: This was a Roman Catholic priest?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: Okay.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Morris was not any religion, but I thought I had already been singing in the choir in the church, I thought I’d better have him do it because that was always fun. I stayed with it for quite a while. I either played the organ or directed or sang for a number of years because my father had been a musician, and I learned early on and I sang in the choir in college and it was a natural thing to do.
Mrs. Battle: Going back a little bit, you said you had to stay in the bullpen until your clearance. How long did it take for your clearance?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Now, I don’t remember. I just can’t remember that detail. It seemed forever, but I’m sure it wasn’t.
Mrs. Battle: ’Cause I know when George, my husband – it took three months and I was thinking that must have been less.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, no, no, it was more like maybe a few weeks, and possibly because I did not have work experience prior to that, they just had to check on family background and college background. It probably went a lot quicker.
Mrs. Battle: When you were – were you on Wade Lane? Is that where you had this apartment?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: You continued to work after you were married?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes, yes and it was great that they let us be on the same shift.
Mrs. Battle: Yes.
Mrs. Fortenbery: That was very helpful. But then life changed completely, because then your whole social life was with other married couples, and you entertained each other at dinner and that kind of thing. Some very good friends of mine that I went to college with a couple years, they were a couple years ahead and they were here in Oak Ridge, and they had a baby. So then we’d go babysit for their baby. Morris had gone to school with Gil Scarborough, and he and Nancy were good friends, and so there were just a lot of people that he knew and there were people I knew. And then the people in your apartment complex – you just felt like you were a family. It was absolutely wonderful. So we enjoyed it.
Mrs. Battle: Okay at this point you were married in June of ’45 and the bomb was to be dropped in August of ’45. Did you know at that point what was going on?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, that was the most – I mean, I will show you later the newspaper that I have. It’s pristine condition from the News Sentinel about the bomb being dropped. But it was a very exciting time to know that something we had done actually – we hoped the war was going to end, but they – then they had to bomb, drop the one at Nagasaki before the war ended. But prior to that, of course, we had the Germany surrender which was pretty exciting. Then of course, with Roosevelt dying, that was dreadful. I mean, that was great sadness. So there was just a lot of things happening there all in one year. And so it was – I thought it was very courageous of Truman. He showed his mettle at the Potsdam Conference. He stood up very well against Churchill and Stalin, and that was impressive. At first, you know, people just didn’t think he was going to do a very good job. But now I know this, history teachers think he was wonderful. And I was very proud that I had been a Democrat all my life, so I hadn’t had voting privileges that long but definitely was Democrat.
Mrs. Battle: Did some of the people voice any opposition at the plants to the dropping of the bomb?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Not that I ever heard, and it wasn’t until several years later when a lot of the peace movements started that a lot of people began to wonder if we could’ve been able to win that war with Japan without doing the bomb. But on the other hand, it seems that some of the Japanese people that have been here in Oak Ridge said it saved a lot of lives, and it certainly, according to the military, has saved a lot of our U.S. lives, so it certainly opened up Pandora’s box. But the scare was that Germany was going to develop it, and so there was the race to get it before Germany did.
Mrs. Battle: Well Germany, of course, had surrendered in – I think it was May of ’45.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: And so you didn’t have that worry anymore, but you were continuing to work shift work even after the war was over? Or what happened after August of ’45?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, yes, everybody kept on. We kept on working and I moved from, oh I don’t remember the exact date but I – somewhere along the line, I worked up until a month before my baby was born in July of ’46, and I worked then in Statistics in the same lab but in the office doing the statistical reports and worked on a day shift. But my husband was still working shift work, so we had to bum rides, but that was okay. I remember we had buses, you know. I can remember standing up there ’cause we lived on Wade Lane, walking all the way over to Pennsylvania Avenue to catch the bus to go downtown.
Mrs. Battle: Okay, so the bus would go down Pennsylvania Ave and then –
Mrs. Fortenbery: I don’t know.
Mrs. Battle: You don’t remember how –
Mrs. Fortenbery: I couldn’t remember all of it to save my soul, you know, I just remember standing there and catching the bus. Whereas, in the dormitory, we would stand out on what was the Turnpike then in all the dust, mud, or whatever, waiting for our bus.
Mrs. Battle: Was there any shelter, any type of shelter for you?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, yes, but they weren’t everywhere. But if you stood most anywhere they would – now, on Pennsylvania Avenue there wasn’t one where I caught the bus, but there were some. It’s just the bus would stop wherever you were.
Mrs. Battle: So all you had to do was flag it down. Did you get to know the bus driver? Did they get to know you?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, there were just too many people.
Mrs. Battle: Then the buses were full, I mean crowded, would you say?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: At the time that Oak Ridge was at its maximum, there were about seventy-five thousand people working here. When did the exodus of employees begin?
Mrs. Fortenbery: I’m not real sure. It’s seemed to me it had to be within that next year, because an awful lot of people that we knew decided to leave and go home. Which we figured, well, you know, this is fine; we’ll stay here and see what happens. But a lot of people did leave, and some people went on over to Los Alamos from here. A lot of them did, as a matter of fact. I think they figured that more research was going to be done in Los Alamos than was going to be done here. After a while, it looked like things were starting to just go downhill, but fortunately, Y-12 kept finding things to do.
Mrs. Battle: You did not go back to work, then, after you had your baby?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No I didn’t. And I didn’t, I think, until the children were all in school except one, and then I started doing volunteer work in the schools, and then when she was in school, I started subbing. But I waited until they were all in school, and I thought of going and getting a teacher’s certificate but I like the subbing because I could be home when they came home, and that seemed to be very important. I learned that if you’re not here the minute they come in, you’ve missed something; you never hear about it again.
Mrs. Battle: Right. Can you think of any experiences while you were working that would be of special interest? Special people that you remember?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, there were [some] fantastic people from Rochester that came. Of course, once their job was done and Carbide took over, they went back to Rochester. But they were very, very smart, interesting people. Mr. Ballard���s the only name that comes to my mind right at the moment, and I think he was the vice president at the time. I'm trying to remember all the things that happened while I was working, but it’s hard to put into words. There was such a fellowship feeling of the people that were working that even today some of these people have been my best friends. Unfortunately Doris Strausser has passed away, but all through the years we stayed very close, so many. And even the ones that moved back and went back to wherever, we’d write to each other and whenever anything happens – they came when Morris died, and so we keep up with each other.
Mrs. Battle: So that was a close bond, working.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes, yes.
Mrs. Battle: Did you feel patriotic doing this job and you just still did not know – was it still called "the project"?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh right. Most of us knew pretty much what we were planning, what was going to happen, and definitely felt that this was a war effort, especially the people that had been working in another plant that were brought up here. It was definitely a war effort; they realized that and we realized that. And we had no notion of when this would happen. All we did was look at our uranium sample and measure it and weigh it, and that kind of thing, but we knew. My last year in college, I had the first published textbook of nuclear physics that described nuclear fission, and in the laboratory in the office, you opened the book and there it was. So you knew that this uranium process was obviously for this purpose and the only reason it could be, you figured, in your own little mind. We never discussed this because of the notion of ‘you can’t trust anybody,’ but you figured that this was gonna happen. Now whether or not different levels of the people, anybody in the lab area – where I was, their highest designation was a “4” and then they went down, and I had a “3” and other people had a “2”. It just depended, I guess, on a need to know type of thing, and especially since you weren’t supposed to discuss this with other people, which I’m sure other people did. I think that most of us were pretty careful, and the only thing we discussed was the tragedy when we had three samples and none of them jived, and we knew we couldn’t taste it, ’cause sometimes that helps when you’re analyzing stuff, but I think everybody knew this was a war effort.
Mrs. Battle: So you knew sort of what you were doing, but you weren’t real sure. Well you, in your own mind, knew approximately what you were doing, what you were working towards.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, we knew that this whole idea was to take the uranium and get it from 238 to 235, and the whole idea, we were pretty sure, was for fission and that the only reason you’re doing this is to make a bomb, but when or where we had no notion.
Mrs. Battle: You were speaking of always minding your P’s and Q’s because of this unknown person. Did anybody ever sort of disappear from this?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, see there were those stories. That’s what I was mentioning, you'd have the stories about –
Mrs. Battle: But never actually –
Mrs. Fortenbery: – somebody disappearing, but nobody we knew. But we did know, after a while, we did find out that some of the couples that we knew – that one fellow in particular – because we got to know them very well – and he was actually in the Army in intelligence but was a chemist, and so he had to pretend that he was a civilian and pick up his check like everybody else and then turn it back because the Army didn’t pay nearly – not that we made very much money mind you; the wages were rather small in those days. Even so, the Army’s were even less, and we found that out after a while; but this time it seemed like it really didn’t make any difference.
Mrs. Battle: When you became a couple and you said your life sort of swung into a different phase, you were doing things with couples. Did you ever go to any of the dances on the tennis courts that we’ve heard about?
Mrs. Fortenbery: We didn’t do that so much. Seems to me the hub of activity was in Midtown. I’m trying to remember what went on there. There was a lot going on in what they called Midtown. There was a lot of – back where all the trailers were – but there was a grocery store there, and there were a lot of things going on. But we didn’t do very much of that. We went to the Carbide parties when Carbide did that, but Morris didn’t like to dance very much. I was a jitterbug. I had jitterbug when I was young, and all we could do is he’d stand and I’d dance around him. He didn’t think it was much fun. He was raised in western Kentucky by very, very strict people, and dancing was just nothing; nobody did that. So if you don’t learn this when you’re young – but he had a lot of rhythm because he played the trumpet and he loved jazz, so whenever we were able to, we went to Knoxville to hear concerts. That was part of our group thing too.
Mrs. Battle: Well where did you do your grocery shopping once you were a couple?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, that. You know, I have a hard time remembering, but there was a grocery store in Townsite, and that’s all I can remember is the grocery store in Townsite.
Mrs. Battle: Now that's Jackson Plaza, Jackson Square I mean.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: And there was a movie house there.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: And the high school was there; quite a bit of activity in that area.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh yeah, yeah, drugstore.
Mrs. Battle: Did the weather continue to be as nice as it had been or did it – you got used to the weather? You had mentioned that early on in the interview that, you know, the sun was so much brighter down south.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, I’ll tell you frankly, I still don’t like the heat very much, but no, we learned to tolerate it. And my husband invented – well he didn’t invent it. I thought he had, but he had read about the Swedish people using swamp coolers to cool and he – when we moved into an upstairs apartment after the baby came, he made a swamp cooler for the upstairs window where he packed it up into the frame with straw and then vipped a hose through it and had a fan on the other side so that you had cool air coming through the house. And I thought he was so smart, but then I found out that they did this in Sweden. I should have known; everybody where I came from were Swedish. I tell you what, I can remember – I think it was the summer of 1947 – where it actually got above a hundred degrees in Oak Ridge. It was downright miserable.
Mrs. Battle: I imagine that.
Mrs. Fortenbery: I remember it well.
Mrs. Battle: Because you didn’t have air conditioning in those days.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, no.
Mrs. Battle: And that was just sweltering hot. Were the plants hot then? Well of course you weren’t working at that point.
Mrs. Fortenbery: They had to have. I don’t recall. You know, so many of them were built with such thick walls that you didn’t have the problem that you have with thinner walls, that they would stay cooler. But I know in some of the labs, they had to have temperature controls, and how they did it I’m not positive, but I know they had to have temperature controls in the spectrometry labs and stuff like that. I’m going to get a drink of water. Do you want to hit pause?
[break in recording]
Mrs. Fortenbery: Some of the appalling things that hit a northerner in their first excursion south, and that was segregation. I could not see any reason for it, and a lot of us didn’t feel we could tolerate it. I recall in a lab, a gal that had – she actually was degreed. I don’t remember what her degree was, but she was hired as a dishwasher and everybody in the lab thought this was a disgrace. We wanted to go to the president and do something about this, but, you know, it just was so ingrained. But just to see the signs, “Black” and “White,” it was dreadful, and for someone who – well, where I grew up there weren’t enough, I suppose, to ever frighten anybody. There weren't people of color to frighten people, so nobody thought anything about it, and even by the time I was growing up, the Indians would get – one time, probably would have been treated as the Negro was in the south – were welcome, because I had a professor in college who was an Indian but had been educated. So the whole notion was so foreign, and we may have read about it, but it doesn’t sink in until you see it.
Mrs. Battle: Till you experience it.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And it was dreadful. And we all felt that way, and so I don’t know, that was a whole new, whole new society to try and get accustomed to.
Mrs. Battle: So you had a language and you had a segregation society, so there were two strictly southern types of things that you had to –
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, and there were a lot of people that I knew from the South who agreed that this was perfectly dreadful. And Morris's folks, they were in Kentucky, and I guess that’s a different – it’s not like being in the Deep South. They never could understand this dreadful business either, and especially his mother, who had been a teacher, too. And consequently, Morris never felt that, didn’t have that feeling either. Are we about out of time? Are we going?
Mrs. Battle: Yes, we’re going.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, the other part that I’m sure everybody has talked about is having to have a badge to get into town. I mean every time you left town –
Mrs. Battle: You mean to go to Knoxville?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, and so to get back in, you had to have your badge. And if anybody was going to come and visit, you had to go get passes for them, and then you had to meet them at the gate with their passes. I guess that was why a lot of people didn’t want the gates taken down, ’cause you felt so secure.
Mrs. Battle: You did.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, nobody ever had a lock on their door. In fact I had to have a lock put on my door when one of my daughters got married, because the insurance people said, “If you don’t lock your door, we can’t insure. Especially if you have wedding presents in here, you’re going to have to put a lock on that door.” But you got accustomed to not locking the door. Of course, where I grew up, we didn’t lock doors either. My dad always laughed. He said anybody want to get in bad enough, a lock wasn’t gonna stop them, so we didn’t bother locking our doors either.
Mrs. Battle: So there’s a certain sense of security because it was a fenced-in area –
Mrs. Fortenbery: Right.
Mrs. Battle: – that you had. Were there ever any murders? Were there ever any robberies?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well you know if there were, we never heard about them, and there wasn’t anybody you knew. I mean, at least I never heard of any. So, we heard of a lot of cockroaches. People that lived in apartments always had to struggle with cockroaches and that’s the worst of our worries.
Mrs. Battle: Oh, now, was that a strange happening, moving south?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, yes.
Mrs. Battle: Or did you have cockroaches?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, had no cockroaches where I came from.
Mrs. Battle: So you had three things.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And snakes, but the funny thing was, we did – some of our friends – we were able to rent bicycles in the early days. This was before I had even met my husband or started to date him. I can’t even remember where, but we could bicycle all the way down to the Clinch River where they were bringing in the water, because, with the fence all the way around, you didn’t have the fence barriers that you have today around the plants. So we managed to have excursions in all kinds of interesting places. There were a lot of houses that were left at that time and actually felt – one day we came across where someone must have left in such a hurry, we found a book in the yard where they had hastily – and of course John Rice Irwin has the most wonderful story about having to pick up and move because the government wanted his land. When you think back to that, you’re not very proud of what the government did in Norris and Oak Ridge. They sort of acted a little bit arbitrarily with the way they paid people, anyway. So a lot of people also – getting back to how they felt in later years – there have been a lot of people who begin to wonder about the fact that by dropping that first bomb, we opened up this dreadful Pandora’s box, and that everybody else feels like they have to have one too. But when you realize that Russia had them and we had them for all those many years and nobody wanted to drop it first, it was a good deterrent maybe.
Mrs. Battle: Right.
Mrs. Fortenbery: But not today. Looks like we’re going to – I don’t want to get into politics on this. I better stop.
Mrs. Battle: Right, right, right.
Mrs. Fortenbery: But that I guess that sums up the ’40s because I really didn’t get involved in a lot of things with the League of Women Voters and AAUW until the ’50s.
Mrs. Battle: AAUW didn’t start until ’51, ’52.
Mrs. Fortenbery: ’51, ’52, I think I was a Charter Member of AAUW.
Mrs. Battle: You were a member of the League of Women Voters?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: And that started when?
Mrs. Fortenbery: That was about, let’s see, if last year was my 50-year, I think it started – it may have started a year ahead of the AAUW, but I think I must have joined it about the same time.
Mrs. Battle: Same time? You’ve been active in women’s movements, you might say.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, but after a while I sort of dropped my – I didn’t stay as active as in the earlier days. ’Cause we all get tired. You know, I was in there pitching. I was subbing and I was volunteering and I was doing lots of things that I don’t do now, and it’s just – I still, in the League, I still do the Great Decisions every year and I enjoy that a whole lot.
Mrs. Battle: Right. Back to the ’40s. What would you say was your happiest or most enlightening experience? Would there be any one thing that would stand out in your mind? When you think of the ’40s, what pops right into your mind? The first thing.
Mrs. Fortenbery: The ’40s. Well, I loved the music.
Mrs. Battle: Okay, there you go.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, we did, we did love music, and I have a collection of LPs here that – in fact, I’ve got 78’s from the days of the big band and most of my classical music is on LP. Morris and I – I don’t know when we started, but we went to the concerts over in Knoxville when they were in the gym, the old gym at UT. Can you believe that? They set up chairs for the concerts, and I remember that well, because Morris fell asleep during one of them. He’d worked too hard, so he’d be so tired.
Mrs. Battle: Well, if you have a memory of the ’40s, what would you say was the saddest memory? Was there anything that was –
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, we remember very, very well. My first, of course, was I was still in school during Pearl Harbor. That was the worst, worst shock that I stood up for, and D-Day was worrisome, very worrisome and hopeful, but worrisome, and then Roosevelt dying. I think that just hit everybody.
Mrs. Battle: I gather you didn’t realize that he was as sick as he was.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, not till things came out later, no. It’s amazing, but of course, you just listened to him; we didn’t have TV to watch.
Mrs. Battle: Right.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And he was able to keep that up very well. So –
Mrs. Battle: [So those were] the most important events, and that would also include the dropping of the bomb, too, I [assume].
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh yeah, we were concerned. I mean, we thought – I guess we were so optimistic, we thought, well, we’re never going to have another [war], [this is] nice, we can raise our son, we’re having a – [laughter] what fools we are.
Mrs. Battle: Well, I know the picture that Ed Westcott took of everybody, you know, the signs up that the war was over – do you remember where you were the day that the war ended?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Not really. I can remember where I was with Pearl Harbor, and I can remember where I was on September 11th, you know. These are things that just – they just are like shocks in your – such a shock, and I can remember all the details but I can’t – I just know that it was an exciting time, but I can’t remember exactly where I was.
Mrs. Battle: Well, thank you very much. This was an interview with Lynn Fortenbery and we are finished. Thank you.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, thank you.
[end of recording]

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ORAL HISTORY OF ROSELLEN “LYNN” FORTENBERY
Interviewed by Connie Battle
January 21, 2003
Mrs. Battle: Tell me how you happened to come to Oak Ridge.
Mrs. Fortenbery: All right, this is my favorite story about time travel. I had graduated with a degree in Chemistry in February.
Mrs. Battle: What year?
Mrs. Fortenbery: In 1944. I had done a summer term. That’s why I got out early, and the professors recommended of all the applications that had come in recruiting things that perhaps I’d enjoy going to Tennessee instead of Delaware, and part of it was the lure. They were telling us they were tapping into our pioneering instincts, don’t you know. Well anyway, I left in March. I left Chicago in a snowstorm and I had an upper berth.
Mrs. Battle: You were on a train.
Mrs. Fortenbery: On a train, and I as we crossed the Ohio River, came into Kentucky, it was morning and the forsythia was blooming. That’s what was so strange. Anyway I stayed in Knoxville. I think it was a Saturday night because I stayed either at Andrew Johnson or Farragut Hotel, can’t remember, but I know walking the streets of Knoxville was an absolutely amazing trip for me. It was crowded. It was just so crowded with people. Now think of today, downtown Knoxville.
Mrs. Battle: Yes, right
Mrs. Fortenbery: But anyway, at every corner there was somebody sitting there who had no legs, was asking for donations, and anyway it was just – so I went to a movie, I remember. I can’t tell you what movie I went to, but I believe that it may have been Monday morning when I went back over to the office, which I think was a union office, Tennessee Eastman, where I boarded a bus to go to “the project.” That’s what they called it.
Mrs. Battle: “The project.”
Mrs. Fortenbery: “The project.” And so out to the project I went and all of this was – I mean, here it was. I had never been so – this was brand new city. They were building it when I arrived and I could not understand the language. Now I know people find this hard to believe, because soon we became acclimated, but at first it was very strange. But it was all exciting and brand new. And so that’s how I managed to get here and lived over in West Village, what they called West Village, in a dormitory and it was in the summer. It was hot and dusty and when it rained it was muddy. It definitely took a lot of stamina to stay here, but we soon – we worked shift work.
Mrs. Battle: What plant did you work at?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Y-12
Mrs. Battle: And what did you do?
Mrs. Fortenbery: I was an analytical chemist.
Mrs. Battle: What college did you graduate in?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Lawrence University.
Mrs. Battle: In Chicago.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, in Wisconsin.
Mrs. Battle: Oh in Wisconsin, okay.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And because I came from the upper peninsula of Michigan – and my father had gone to the University of Wisconsin and my uncles had all gone to Houghton Tech, which was an engineering school where I’d thought I’d like to go, but they said I wouldn’t be happy there and I believed them. But anyway, you made all your friends right away. It was just instant bonding.
Mrs. Battle: This is, you're talking about back in Oak Ridge now.
Mrs. Fortenbery: In Oak Ridge, yeah. And it was the people that were on your shift.
Mrs. Battle: Did you rotate shift or did work the same shift?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, no it was rotating shifts, yeah, and midnight shift and day shift and 3:00 to 11:00 shift. And the midnight shift was lovely because you didn’t get bothered by anybody. It was nice and quiet except that every now and then some big mucky muck from Rochester would come and stroll through the lab and ask questions and leave us all trembling. But anyway, we caught on fast to what we were supposed to be doing.
Mrs. Battle: Were there men and women or were they mostly women?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Mixed.
Mrs. Battle: It was mixed?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, and we had, the first lab that I was in had a woman supervisor, and when a person from another lab came over to ask some questions, she was very, very possessive about our little place and she said, “Now, we already figured out how to do this; you go figure it out yourself.” Which I thought was very odd. Soon we heard that every seventh person was a G7, which meant that they were in the Army but came to Oak Ridge and pretended to be civilians, and they had their ear to the ground so that if anybody talked out of turn, they were whisked away. Where to, we did not know. But it made you very leery about talking out of turn until you knew someone very, very well. Then you could discuss what you were doing. But it was amazing to me in the office where, when you opened up the textbook it would fall right open to our fission process that we were working on. So it wasn’t any secret to people with “3” on their badge, and I guess because we had had some nuclear physics before we came – but anyway, that was my first experience.
Mrs. Battle: Right, did you enjoy living in the dorm?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, well, didn’t spend much time there as a matter of fact. You know, you went to the cafeteria to eat and your friends – you would go somewhere else, maybe find a place to eat someplace else, take the bus to Knoxville. The fun thing [was] that anybody with a car was fair game. They were very popular. I found out that besides the language difference, the sun was much different in Tennessee than up in Michigan, and the first time I went to Big Ridge during the day and came home to work a midnight shift, I was so badly sunburned that I had to go to the infirmary. I was miserable. So I learned about the direct rays of the sun in Tennessee, but that was one of the things you did in the summer. So you didn’t spend – at least I didn’t spend very much time in the dorm, although it was fun. The people were, they were just riotous; they were funny. What was amazing to me in Oak Ridge in the early days was the complete equality everybody felt with everybody else. Nobody seemed to feel that they were any better than anybody else, which [is] not true today, and also we were an extremely tolerant bunch of people, you know.
Mrs. Battle: Yes.
Mrs. Fortenbery: There were things that went on that were a little risqué – so what. We didn’t worry about it. But we had extremely strict house mothers in those dorms. You didn’t get away with anything in the dorm if you tried, so that was kind of interesting because I had come from a college where it was rather loosely governed, so it was kind of interesting that we had some strict chaperones. But it was interesting.
Mrs. Battle: Did you meet your husband while you were at work or how did you meet him?
Mrs. Fortenbery: I first met him – my children think this is interesting – before I received my clearance to go to Y-12, I went to what they called the “bullpen,” and that building is still there. I don’t know which one it is now, but it’s a concrete block building that is now right behind the DOE Building, and people that were waiting for clearance were sent there and given any number of different kinds of jobs to do. I was put to assisting the nurses who were giving the new people coming in their shots, and my husband had come up. He had been working in Talladega, Alabama, at the Powder Plant, and then he was sent up here to work. I think there was just a whole crew from Talladega that was sent up. They were all chemists and were sent up to work at Y-12. And lo and behold they gave him his shot and he fainted, so I had to take care of this fainted person, and you know, [the] first experience wasn’t too good. I can’t imagine why somebody would faint when they have a shot. But anyway, I didn’t see much of him, except he turned up on the same shift as I was at Y-12. But in the meantime, I had met several other people, and it was all group stuff. We’d go to the Smokies and we would go to Big Ridge and we would do fun things.
Mrs. Battle: But gas was rationed.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: How did you manage that?
Mrs. Fortenbery: How the person who owned the automobiles managed, I don��t know because that was something that somehow or other they managed to get some gasoline. One of the funniest stories that was told about one person, and I won’t go into too many details, but he had a very fancy convertible car, and I don’t know how many people have told this story, but he went – they, a whole bunch, went to the Smokies. They left their lunch in the car while they went on a hike, and when they came back, this bear had gone through the convertible roof to get the food, and that story just went everywhere. I’m sure that if you talk to anybody who was here in the earlier days, they’ll know that story because the person was fairly well known and loved his car.
Mrs. Battle: Of course.
Mrs. Fortenbery: But how they got the gasoline, I didn’t ask. I do know that anytime there was a line anywhere, people got in line, because it meant that they had something, be it cigarettes or candy or whatever. You got in line because everything was rather scarce. It was the same at the grocery, which I didn’t worry about until I married. My problem [was] we couldn’t cook in the dorm, and we went to the cafeteria to eat or we would hear about some fantastic place and take a bus to Knoxville on a day off. Real food with real napkins – think we were really uptown.
Mrs. Battle: Well when did you get married?
Mrs. Fortenbery: June of 1945. We courted fast in those days, but I did take my prospective husband and I took a train North so that my people could meet him, and my younger brothers just thought this was the funniest freak they had ever run into. They constantly asked him questions to hear him talk because he was from Kentucky originally, but he’d lived in Alabama long enough that he sounded like he came from Alabama. This was such a novelty and they just were falling over each other. They thought this was so funny. But anyway, I guess my mother and dad didn’t know if this was such a good idea, but since I had gone off by myself in the first place they figured, well, it’s my business. So we were married as soon as they gave us a place to live. Then we went ahead and got married. We had to wait till they – there wasn't any point in getting married and not having a place to live, so we got on a list to find the place and we were very fortunate. We had a “K1” apartment. They were four-unit apartments, and they were on West Outer and Wade Lane, and they were excellent. They were actually made out of redwood, beautiful, beautiful apartments, very well made, hardwood floors, very nice. So that’s what we found, and so we married and Morris’s best friend helped me move from the dormitory that afternoon and brought all my stuff to this apartment and then some other friends had a reception for us. They already had a house; it was a flattop. So anyway, that was the story of that.
Mrs. Battle: Were you married in a church?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, we were married in Father Seener’s – he had a house up on Geneva Lane, and we were married in his living room.
Mrs. Battle: This was a Roman Catholic priest?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: Okay.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Morris was not any religion, but I thought I had already been singing in the choir in the church, I thought I’d better have him do it because that was always fun. I stayed with it for quite a while. I either played the organ or directed or sang for a number of years because my father had been a musician, and I learned early on and I sang in the choir in college and it was a natural thing to do.
Mrs. Battle: Going back a little bit, you said you had to stay in the bullpen until your clearance. How long did it take for your clearance?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Now, I don’t remember. I just can’t remember that detail. It seemed forever, but I’m sure it wasn’t.
Mrs. Battle: ’Cause I know when George, my husband – it took three months and I was thinking that must have been less.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, no, no, it was more like maybe a few weeks, and possibly because I did not have work experience prior to that, they just had to check on family background and college background. It probably went a lot quicker.
Mrs. Battle: When you were – were you on Wade Lane? Is that where you had this apartment?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: You continued to work after you were married?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes, yes and it was great that they let us be on the same shift.
Mrs. Battle: Yes.
Mrs. Fortenbery: That was very helpful. But then life changed completely, because then your whole social life was with other married couples, and you entertained each other at dinner and that kind of thing. Some very good friends of mine that I went to college with a couple years, they were a couple years ahead and they were here in Oak Ridge, and they had a baby. So then we’d go babysit for their baby. Morris had gone to school with Gil Scarborough, and he and Nancy were good friends, and so there were just a lot of people that he knew and there were people I knew. And then the people in your apartment complex – you just felt like you were a family. It was absolutely wonderful. So we enjoyed it.
Mrs. Battle: Okay at this point you were married in June of ’45 and the bomb was to be dropped in August of ’45. Did you know at that point what was going on?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, that was the most – I mean, I will show you later the newspaper that I have. It’s pristine condition from the News Sentinel about the bomb being dropped. But it was a very exciting time to know that something we had done actually – we hoped the war was going to end, but they – then they had to bomb, drop the one at Nagasaki before the war ended. But prior to that, of course, we had the Germany surrender which was pretty exciting. Then of course, with Roosevelt dying, that was dreadful. I mean, that was great sadness. So there was just a lot of things happening there all in one year. And so it was – I thought it was very courageous of Truman. He showed his mettle at the Potsdam Conference. He stood up very well against Churchill and Stalin, and that was impressive. At first, you know, people just didn’t think he was going to do a very good job. But now I know this, history teachers think he was wonderful. And I was very proud that I had been a Democrat all my life, so I hadn’t had voting privileges that long but definitely was Democrat.
Mrs. Battle: Did some of the people voice any opposition at the plants to the dropping of the bomb?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Not that I ever heard, and it wasn’t until several years later when a lot of the peace movements started that a lot of people began to wonder if we could’ve been able to win that war with Japan without doing the bomb. But on the other hand, it seems that some of the Japanese people that have been here in Oak Ridge said it saved a lot of lives, and it certainly, according to the military, has saved a lot of our U.S. lives, so it certainly opened up Pandora’s box. But the scare was that Germany was going to develop it, and so there was the race to get it before Germany did.
Mrs. Battle: Well Germany, of course, had surrendered in – I think it was May of ’45.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: And so you didn’t have that worry anymore, but you were continuing to work shift work even after the war was over? Or what happened after August of ’45?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, yes, everybody kept on. We kept on working and I moved from, oh I don’t remember the exact date but I – somewhere along the line, I worked up until a month before my baby was born in July of ’46, and I worked then in Statistics in the same lab but in the office doing the statistical reports and worked on a day shift. But my husband was still working shift work, so we had to bum rides, but that was okay. I remember we had buses, you know. I can remember standing up there ’cause we lived on Wade Lane, walking all the way over to Pennsylvania Avenue to catch the bus to go downtown.
Mrs. Battle: Okay, so the bus would go down Pennsylvania Ave and then –
Mrs. Fortenbery: I don’t know.
Mrs. Battle: You don’t remember how –
Mrs. Fortenbery: I couldn’t remember all of it to save my soul, you know, I just remember standing there and catching the bus. Whereas, in the dormitory, we would stand out on what was the Turnpike then in all the dust, mud, or whatever, waiting for our bus.
Mrs. Battle: Was there any shelter, any type of shelter for you?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, yes, but they weren’t everywhere. But if you stood most anywhere they would – now, on Pennsylvania Avenue there wasn’t one where I caught the bus, but there were some. It’s just the bus would stop wherever you were.
Mrs. Battle: So all you had to do was flag it down. Did you get to know the bus driver? Did they get to know you?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, there were just too many people.
Mrs. Battle: Then the buses were full, I mean crowded, would you say?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: At the time that Oak Ridge was at its maximum, there were about seventy-five thousand people working here. When did the exodus of employees begin?
Mrs. Fortenbery: I’m not real sure. It’s seemed to me it had to be within that next year, because an awful lot of people that we knew decided to leave and go home. Which we figured, well, you know, this is fine; we’ll stay here and see what happens. But a lot of people did leave, and some people went on over to Los Alamos from here. A lot of them did, as a matter of fact. I think they figured that more research was going to be done in Los Alamos than was going to be done here. After a while, it looked like things were starting to just go downhill, but fortunately, Y-12 kept finding things to do.
Mrs. Battle: You did not go back to work, then, after you had your baby?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No I didn’t. And I didn’t, I think, until the children were all in school except one, and then I started doing volunteer work in the schools, and then when she was in school, I started subbing. But I waited until they were all in school, and I thought of going and getting a teacher’s certificate but I like the subbing because I could be home when they came home, and that seemed to be very important. I learned that if you’re not here the minute they come in, you’ve missed something; you never hear about it again.
Mrs. Battle: Right. Can you think of any experiences while you were working that would be of special interest? Special people that you remember?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, there were [some] fantastic people from Rochester that came. Of course, once their job was done and Carbide took over, they went back to Rochester. But they were very, very smart, interesting people. Mr. Ballard���s the only name that comes to my mind right at the moment, and I think he was the vice president at the time. I'm trying to remember all the things that happened while I was working, but it’s hard to put into words. There was such a fellowship feeling of the people that were working that even today some of these people have been my best friends. Unfortunately Doris Strausser has passed away, but all through the years we stayed very close, so many. And even the ones that moved back and went back to wherever, we’d write to each other and whenever anything happens – they came when Morris died, and so we keep up with each other.
Mrs. Battle: So that was a close bond, working.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes, yes.
Mrs. Battle: Did you feel patriotic doing this job and you just still did not know – was it still called "the project"?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh right. Most of us knew pretty much what we were planning, what was going to happen, and definitely felt that this was a war effort, especially the people that had been working in another plant that were brought up here. It was definitely a war effort; they realized that and we realized that. And we had no notion of when this would happen. All we did was look at our uranium sample and measure it and weigh it, and that kind of thing, but we knew. My last year in college, I had the first published textbook of nuclear physics that described nuclear fission, and in the laboratory in the office, you opened the book and there it was. So you knew that this uranium process was obviously for this purpose and the only reason it could be, you figured, in your own little mind. We never discussed this because of the notion of ‘you can’t trust anybody,’ but you figured that this was gonna happen. Now whether or not different levels of the people, anybody in the lab area – where I was, their highest designation was a “4” and then they went down, and I had a “3” and other people had a “2”. It just depended, I guess, on a need to know type of thing, and especially since you weren’t supposed to discuss this with other people, which I’m sure other people did. I think that most of us were pretty careful, and the only thing we discussed was the tragedy when we had three samples and none of them jived, and we knew we couldn’t taste it, ’cause sometimes that helps when you’re analyzing stuff, but I think everybody knew this was a war effort.
Mrs. Battle: So you knew sort of what you were doing, but you weren’t real sure. Well you, in your own mind, knew approximately what you were doing, what you were working towards.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, we knew that this whole idea was to take the uranium and get it from 238 to 235, and the whole idea, we were pretty sure, was for fission and that the only reason you’re doing this is to make a bomb, but when or where we had no notion.
Mrs. Battle: You were speaking of always minding your P’s and Q’s because of this unknown person. Did anybody ever sort of disappear from this?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, see there were those stories. That’s what I was mentioning, you'd have the stories about –
Mrs. Battle: But never actually –
Mrs. Fortenbery: – somebody disappearing, but nobody we knew. But we did know, after a while, we did find out that some of the couples that we knew – that one fellow in particular – because we got to know them very well – and he was actually in the Army in intelligence but was a chemist, and so he had to pretend that he was a civilian and pick up his check like everybody else and then turn it back because the Army didn’t pay nearly – not that we made very much money mind you; the wages were rather small in those days. Even so, the Army’s were even less, and we found that out after a while; but this time it seemed like it really didn’t make any difference.
Mrs. Battle: When you became a couple and you said your life sort of swung into a different phase, you were doing things with couples. Did you ever go to any of the dances on the tennis courts that we’ve heard about?
Mrs. Fortenbery: We didn’t do that so much. Seems to me the hub of activity was in Midtown. I’m trying to remember what went on there. There was a lot going on in what they called Midtown. There was a lot of – back where all the trailers were – but there was a grocery store there, and there were a lot of things going on. But we didn’t do very much of that. We went to the Carbide parties when Carbide did that, but Morris didn’t like to dance very much. I was a jitterbug. I had jitterbug when I was young, and all we could do is he’d stand and I’d dance around him. He didn’t think it was much fun. He was raised in western Kentucky by very, very strict people, and dancing was just nothing; nobody did that. So if you don’t learn this when you’re young – but he had a lot of rhythm because he played the trumpet and he loved jazz, so whenever we were able to, we went to Knoxville to hear concerts. That was part of our group thing too.
Mrs. Battle: Well where did you do your grocery shopping once you were a couple?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, that. You know, I have a hard time remembering, but there was a grocery store in Townsite, and that’s all I can remember is the grocery store in Townsite.
Mrs. Battle: Now that's Jackson Plaza, Jackson Square I mean.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: And there was a movie house there.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah.
Mrs. Battle: And the high school was there; quite a bit of activity in that area.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh yeah, yeah, drugstore.
Mrs. Battle: Did the weather continue to be as nice as it had been or did it – you got used to the weather? You had mentioned that early on in the interview that, you know, the sun was so much brighter down south.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, I’ll tell you frankly, I still don’t like the heat very much, but no, we learned to tolerate it. And my husband invented – well he didn’t invent it. I thought he had, but he had read about the Swedish people using swamp coolers to cool and he – when we moved into an upstairs apartment after the baby came, he made a swamp cooler for the upstairs window where he packed it up into the frame with straw and then vipped a hose through it and had a fan on the other side so that you had cool air coming through the house. And I thought he was so smart, but then I found out that they did this in Sweden. I should have known; everybody where I came from were Swedish. I tell you what, I can remember – I think it was the summer of 1947 – where it actually got above a hundred degrees in Oak Ridge. It was downright miserable.
Mrs. Battle: I imagine that.
Mrs. Fortenbery: I remember it well.
Mrs. Battle: Because you didn’t have air conditioning in those days.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, no.
Mrs. Battle: And that was just sweltering hot. Were the plants hot then? Well of course you weren’t working at that point.
Mrs. Fortenbery: They had to have. I don’t recall. You know, so many of them were built with such thick walls that you didn’t have the problem that you have with thinner walls, that they would stay cooler. But I know in some of the labs, they had to have temperature controls, and how they did it I’m not positive, but I know they had to have temperature controls in the spectrometry labs and stuff like that. I’m going to get a drink of water. Do you want to hit pause?
[break in recording]
Mrs. Fortenbery: Some of the appalling things that hit a northerner in their first excursion south, and that was segregation. I could not see any reason for it, and a lot of us didn’t feel we could tolerate it. I recall in a lab, a gal that had – she actually was degreed. I don’t remember what her degree was, but she was hired as a dishwasher and everybody in the lab thought this was a disgrace. We wanted to go to the president and do something about this, but, you know, it just was so ingrained. But just to see the signs, “Black” and “White,” it was dreadful, and for someone who – well, where I grew up there weren’t enough, I suppose, to ever frighten anybody. There weren't people of color to frighten people, so nobody thought anything about it, and even by the time I was growing up, the Indians would get – one time, probably would have been treated as the Negro was in the south – were welcome, because I had a professor in college who was an Indian but had been educated. So the whole notion was so foreign, and we may have read about it, but it doesn’t sink in until you see it.
Mrs. Battle: Till you experience it.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And it was dreadful. And we all felt that way, and so I don’t know, that was a whole new, whole new society to try and get accustomed to.
Mrs. Battle: So you had a language and you had a segregation society, so there were two strictly southern types of things that you had to –
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, and there were a lot of people that I knew from the South who agreed that this was perfectly dreadful. And Morris's folks, they were in Kentucky, and I guess that’s a different – it’s not like being in the Deep South. They never could understand this dreadful business either, and especially his mother, who had been a teacher, too. And consequently, Morris never felt that, didn’t have that feeling either. Are we about out of time? Are we going?
Mrs. Battle: Yes, we’re going.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, the other part that I’m sure everybody has talked about is having to have a badge to get into town. I mean every time you left town –
Mrs. Battle: You mean to go to Knoxville?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, and so to get back in, you had to have your badge. And if anybody was going to come and visit, you had to go get passes for them, and then you had to meet them at the gate with their passes. I guess that was why a lot of people didn’t want the gates taken down, ’cause you felt so secure.
Mrs. Battle: You did.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yeah, nobody ever had a lock on their door. In fact I had to have a lock put on my door when one of my daughters got married, because the insurance people said, “If you don’t lock your door, we can’t insure. Especially if you have wedding presents in here, you’re going to have to put a lock on that door.” But you got accustomed to not locking the door. Of course, where I grew up, we didn’t lock doors either. My dad always laughed. He said anybody want to get in bad enough, a lock wasn’t gonna stop them, so we didn’t bother locking our doors either.
Mrs. Battle: So there’s a certain sense of security because it was a fenced-in area –
Mrs. Fortenbery: Right.
Mrs. Battle: – that you had. Were there ever any murders? Were there ever any robberies?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well you know if there were, we never heard about them, and there wasn’t anybody you knew. I mean, at least I never heard of any. So, we heard of a lot of cockroaches. People that lived in apartments always had to struggle with cockroaches and that’s the worst of our worries.
Mrs. Battle: Oh, now, was that a strange happening, moving south?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh, yes.
Mrs. Battle: Or did you have cockroaches?
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, had no cockroaches where I came from.
Mrs. Battle: So you had three things.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And snakes, but the funny thing was, we did – some of our friends – we were able to rent bicycles in the early days. This was before I had even met my husband or started to date him. I can’t even remember where, but we could bicycle all the way down to the Clinch River where they were bringing in the water, because, with the fence all the way around, you didn’t have the fence barriers that you have today around the plants. So we managed to have excursions in all kinds of interesting places. There were a lot of houses that were left at that time and actually felt – one day we came across where someone must have left in such a hurry, we found a book in the yard where they had hastily – and of course John Rice Irwin has the most wonderful story about having to pick up and move because the government wanted his land. When you think back to that, you’re not very proud of what the government did in Norris and Oak Ridge. They sort of acted a little bit arbitrarily with the way they paid people, anyway. So a lot of people also – getting back to how they felt in later years – there have been a lot of people who begin to wonder about the fact that by dropping that first bomb, we opened up this dreadful Pandora’s box, and that everybody else feels like they have to have one too. But when you realize that Russia had them and we had them for all those many years and nobody wanted to drop it first, it was a good deterrent maybe.
Mrs. Battle: Right.
Mrs. Fortenbery: But not today. Looks like we’re going to – I don’t want to get into politics on this. I better stop.
Mrs. Battle: Right, right, right.
Mrs. Fortenbery: But that I guess that sums up the ’40s because I really didn’t get involved in a lot of things with the League of Women Voters and AAUW until the ’50s.
Mrs. Battle: AAUW didn’t start until ’51, ’52.
Mrs. Fortenbery: ’51, ’52, I think I was a Charter Member of AAUW.
Mrs. Battle: You were a member of the League of Women Voters?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Yes.
Mrs. Battle: And that started when?
Mrs. Fortenbery: That was about, let’s see, if last year was my 50-year, I think it started – it may have started a year ahead of the AAUW, but I think I must have joined it about the same time.
Mrs. Battle: Same time? You’ve been active in women’s movements, you might say.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, but after a while I sort of dropped my – I didn’t stay as active as in the earlier days. ’Cause we all get tired. You know, I was in there pitching. I was subbing and I was volunteering and I was doing lots of things that I don’t do now, and it’s just – I still, in the League, I still do the Great Decisions every year and I enjoy that a whole lot.
Mrs. Battle: Right. Back to the ’40s. What would you say was your happiest or most enlightening experience? Would there be any one thing that would stand out in your mind? When you think of the ’40s, what pops right into your mind? The first thing.
Mrs. Fortenbery: The ’40s. Well, I loved the music.
Mrs. Battle: Okay, there you go.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, we did, we did love music, and I have a collection of LPs here that – in fact, I’ve got 78’s from the days of the big band and most of my classical music is on LP. Morris and I – I don’t know when we started, but we went to the concerts over in Knoxville when they were in the gym, the old gym at UT. Can you believe that? They set up chairs for the concerts, and I remember that well, because Morris fell asleep during one of them. He’d worked too hard, so he’d be so tired.
Mrs. Battle: Well, if you have a memory of the ’40s, what would you say was the saddest memory? Was there anything that was –
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, we remember very, very well. My first, of course, was I was still in school during Pearl Harbor. That was the worst, worst shock that I stood up for, and D-Day was worrisome, very worrisome and hopeful, but worrisome, and then Roosevelt dying. I think that just hit everybody.
Mrs. Battle: I gather you didn’t realize that he was as sick as he was.
Mrs. Fortenbery: No, not till things came out later, no. It’s amazing, but of course, you just listened to him; we didn’t have TV to watch.
Mrs. Battle: Right.
Mrs. Fortenbery: And he was able to keep that up very well. So –
Mrs. Battle: [So those were] the most important events, and that would also include the dropping of the bomb, too, I [assume].
Mrs. Fortenbery: Oh yeah, we were concerned. I mean, we thought – I guess we were so optimistic, we thought, well, we’re never going to have another [war], [this is] nice, we can raise our son, we’re having a – [laughter] what fools we are.
Mrs. Battle: Well, I know the picture that Ed Westcott took of everybody, you know, the signs up that the war was over – do you remember where you were the day that the war ended?
Mrs. Fortenbery: Not really. I can remember where I was with Pearl Harbor, and I can remember where I was on September 11th, you know. These are things that just – they just are like shocks in your – such a shock, and I can remember all the details but I can’t – I just know that it was an exciting time, but I can’t remember exactly where I was.
Mrs. Battle: Well, thank you very much. This was an interview with Lynn Fortenbery and we are finished. Thank you.
Mrs. Fortenbery: Well, thank you.
[end of recording]